The history of Old Greenland is found in the _Ecclesiastical Annals_, and consists of a mere skeleton of facts. As in Iceland and Norway there was no end of broils and bloodshed. A very considerable trade was evidently carried on between that country and Norway, which is the case at the present time with Denmark. As the land afforded no materials for ships, they depended in a great measure upon others for communication with the mother countries, which finally proved disastrous.
Their villages and farms were numerous. Together they probably numbered several hundred, the ruins now left being both abundant and extensive. Near Igaliko, which is supposed to be the same as the ancient Einarsfiord, are the ruins of a church, probably the cathedral of Gardar. It is called the Kakortok church. It was of simple but massive architecture, and the material was taken from the neighboring cliffs. The stone is rough hewn, and but few signs of mortar are visible. It is fifty-one feet long and twenty-five wide. The north and south walls are over four feet thick, while the end walls are still more massive.
Nor are other monuments wanting. At Igalikko, nine miles from Julian's Hope, a Greenlander being one day employed in obtaining stones to repair his house, found among a pile of fragments a smooth stone that bore, what seemed to him, written characters. He mentioned the circumstance to Mr. Mathieson, the colonial director at Julian's Hope, who inferred that it must be a runic stone. He was so fortunate as to find it afterwards, and he accordingly sent it to Copenhagen, where it arrived in the year 1830. The runes, which were perfectly distinct, showed that it was a tombstone. The inscription was translated as follows:
"VIGDIS MARS DAUGHTER RESTS HERE. MAY GOD GLADDEN HER SOUL."
Another found in 1831, by the Rev. Mr. De Fries, principal of the Moravian Mission, bore the following inscription in the runic letter:
This stone, now in the museum at Copenhagen, was found built into the wall over the entrance of a Greenland house, having been taken for that purpose from a heap of ruins, about two miles north of Friederichsthal. This stone is more than three feet long, being eighteen inches wide in the narrowest part, and about five inches thick. It bears every sign of a high antiquity.